


The emotionally stunted ice queen and the prissy little hero

by Garchomp445



Series: TESICQATPLH and its aftermath [1]
Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Developing Relationship, F/F, Geographical Isolation, Snow, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-30
Updated: 2015-10-14
Packaged: 2018-04-18 01:56:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4688069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Garchomp445/pseuds/Garchomp445
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Severa and Cynthia hate each other, so why does Robin keep pairing them up in battle? They do have their willingness to help others in common, and when that gets pushed to its limits, they wind up miles into the woods, no civilization in sight. Let's hope they can get back before it starts snowing, or these two will have to deal with each other for more than the odd battle.</p><p>Developing Severa and Cynthia's relationship requires something major to occur, which is why their A support contest was such a big deal. Without that, it is a slower boil, but they're both such emphatic individuals that they'll always become friends eventually.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Good night, Luna.

Severa is fed up. Robin expects them to march all the way to the snowy northern Regna Ferox just for a minor skirmish with some risen, but then ALSO decided to pair her up with that prissy little wanna-be hero, Cynthia, so she’s prepared to be totally miserable for this entire battle. It was cunning of Robin to lure all of the risen to the duelling grounds that Kjelle was almost murdered at, since they can deal with them all here and now. A shout rings out towards Severa from their tactician

“Go to the entrance, make sure none escape!”

and Cynthia’s insultingly cheery

“Gotcha, chief!”

Severa sprints off as she berates Cynthia, idly hacking down a general with her axe while saying

“Could you talk a little more while in the middle of a battle?!”

“You haven’t even SEEN how much I can talk!”

Cynthia had just been promoted to a sage from a falcon knight, but she already has the flair down, spinning in place to unleash a critical blast of Elfire into a swordmaster, but not quite finishing it off. Cynthia let out an involuntary

“Eep!”

as it charges towards her, but is intercepted by Severa’s own blade. They keep going, but not before Severa snarks back

“Don’t expect me to save you again.”

“A villain like you would only do so to torment me later!”

Ugh. What a pain. Severa and Cynthia continue to battle, the former charging out into the snow, pine trees flanking her path as she finds an opponent to square off against. The dark knight’s arcthunder is easily avoided, and its armour easily penetrated with a single slash from the leg to the helmet. She turns around to see Cynthia downing a general who was trying to sneak up from behind, then appearing to start, turning out to look into the snow around them. Severa walks up slowly, snarkily saying

“Cynthia, did you forget our mission already? Come on.”

“Wait, it looks like there’s a general out there…”

Cynthia points out into the giant field of snow, and Severa quickly spots the large red mass of metal trudging as fast as it can. She makes a strangled vocalization, then tugs Cynthia along as they run after it.

Running through thick snow is much easier said than done in her full hero armour, and while Cynthia’s sage outfit is much more free-flowing, she’s not too much further ahead, with the snow sticking to the robe’s draping length and fabric boots. The general isn’t too far off, but it seems to have a destination in mind, they’ve been travelling in exactly the same direction for nearly twenty minutes. The forest is thin, spread out, but as every tree before her blocks her view of the general, she only has Cynthia as a rough guide to the path they’re taking. She decides that she’s suffered in frigid silence long enough, and yells at Cynthia

“Hey! Where’s this zombie taking us?!”

“I… don’t… know… huff…”

Cynthia’s still far ahead, and redoubles her run once she stops talking. The sage disappears behind a wide pine tree, the minutes pass without a sound besides Severa’s stomping footsteps, an incredibly loud squeaky door hinge, an

“Aha!”

from Cynthia, and the resulting Elfire explosion. Severa rounds the tree to see the general fading into dust, and a tiny hut with the door torn from its hinges. Cynthia takes a step towards the doorway, but right before she can take a glance inside the darkened room, a sword lunges out, piercing her chest, and retracting for another blow, but Cynthia lunges backward to prepare a spell. Severa draws a steel sword, and parries the next blow meant for Cynthia to let her blast it with Elfire, but its high resistance keeps it alive for Severa’s finishing slash. With the swordmaster dead, Severa sheathes her sword in one smooth motion to check on Cynthia.

The sage is pale, not quite as white as the snow she’s lying on, but has already retrieved her elixir. Her hands shake with pain, so Severa grabs the elixir and props up Cynthia’s head, pouring the bottle’s contents neatly into her mouth. After just a short draught, the colour starts returning to Cynthia’s face, especially the bright red from merely being out in the cold this long. Severa begins to feel it too, and snaps at Cynthia worriedly

“Hey! Let’s get inside before your stunt there freezes us to death.”

“F-fine…”

Severa helps Cynthia up, allowing the sage to brace herself on Severa’s shoulder, the hero stomping through the doorway with nervous gusto. Severa enters first, and immediately stops cold. The swordmaster had been here for a while before they arrived, a fact which is instantly apparent by the bloodstains across the walls, and three young feroxi corpses slumped around the furniture. The kills are recent, and blood freshly red, but at least it was clean, the swordmaster’s killing edge must have easily decapitated its victims. Severa looks back at the injured, impassive sage leaning on her shoulder, and continues shielding her from the horrors inside by taking a step back out. Cynthia impatiently drawls out

“What’s the holdup? Fre-Freezing to death is our plan, now?”

“The stupid, ugly freak of a risen killed everyone inside. I’ll dig the graves, you can carry the bodies out.”

Cynthia covers her mouth with her free hand, a single tear beginning its way down her face in realization of how badly they must’ve failed. Severa herself is choked up, but determined to not cry in front of Cynthia. There’s a spade just inside of the hut, so Severa grabs it, and marches off into the snow.

She finds a spot not too far from the hut, in between two trees. While she doesn’t know Feroxi burial rituals, she does know that they need to dispose of the bodies before they turn into risen themselves, or start attracting bears. Her hands shaking, she stabs the spade into the ground, and instantly remembers why digging is so difficult in the winter. She growls menacingly, this might be awful, digging graves for the civilians lost in the crossfire, but there’s no way she’s letting some DIRT defeat her. First she uses the spade to clear out the snow, then pierces the ground like it’s another general whose armour she needs to shatter.

 

Cynthia approaches the first corpse like it’s a tiger, refusing to believe in its very existence. The elixir has rapidly worked its magic, but she still trembles as she moves the body and its head outside. She lays it down gently in the snow, near the shattered door, trying to ignore the expression of mute horror on the man’s face, just like they had to do in the past, the mass graves a necessity to get rid of as many bodies as possible. The next, a woman, appears to have had a bit more warning, her chair knocked to the ground, and body slumped over next to it. It’s a simple matter to collect it and leave, and once it’s next to the first body, Cynthia goes back inside. The last one is another woman, about the same age as the other two. Her body is behind the other woman’s, and sprawled across the stone floor with a sword impaled into the ground in front of her. Perhaps she put up a fight? Another tear crawls down Cynthia’s face when she realizes that she failed a fellow hero. She takes this corpse out slower than the others, trudging each step towards the front of the hut.

Severa is finally finished with the three holes, and backs up to see Cynthia hauling a corpse over to the graves. Severa avoids the sight of the dead woman’s face, instead staring at Cynthia, who is even paler than when she was stabbed, and with tears streaming slowly from her eyes. The hero sighs, it’ll take a long while for Cynthia to get over this, but they really need to retrace their steps and head out as soon as possible. She runs over to pick up the next body, but her arms are sore and flimsy from demolishing the frozen, packed dirt. The next sigh she lets out is loud enough that Cynthia shoots her a dirty look, and Severa tries not to glare right back, as Cynthia needs time to mourn. She didn’t know them, but she is definitely blaming herself for their deaths.

As they stand there in tense silence, Cynthia carting corpses over to the graves, Severa begins to feel a biting wind drive through her gloves, making the raw patches that much more painful. Severa’s form-fitting armour doesn’t have any patches to warm her hands up in, so she sits there in sullen silence, before Cynthia breaks it to say

“What’s wrong, ice queen, too good to dirty your hands burying the dead?”

“My hands are bleeding.”

“Oh.”

Cynthia will have to get out her anger on the patches of dirt that she’s heaping onto the civilians. Severa looks up, bored with the situation already, and almost smiles as she watches the tiny, crystallized flecks of snow pouring upon her, looking for all the world like a sea of lights in the darkness, a malestrom of… Wait. Oh darn. Severa practically screeches at Cynthia, saying

“Cynthia! We need to leave, NOW! The snow’ll cover our tracks!”

“Huh? Oh! Right!”

The mismatched pair tries to run into the woods, but Severa has to comment almost immediately

“Where are they?!”

“I think I see… nope, that’s just a rock.”

“We came from this direction, right?”

With a flurry of movement, the two girls scurry around the entire clearing, finding nothing as the snow continues to pour down harder and harder, and Severa notices that it’s covering up their tracks even as they make them. A blizzard’s not too far off, so she stops to say

“Cynthia. We’re going to have to stay here for the night. We won’t be able to find our way in the dark, and there’s a snowstorm coming.”

“B-but, my pegasus will be so lonely! A-and…”

Severa grabs Cynthia by the shoulder and marches her into the tiny shack. The snow is swirling around in here, too, so Severa clears off the giant, oaken table with one casual swing, then tries flipping the whole thing onto its side. Cynthia figures out what’s going on, and the both of them prop it up on the stone wall next to the doorway. Severa pushes on it to position it in front of the doorway, but the base is stuck on a cobblestone, so Cynthia wordlessly hefts it off the ground, and the sudden release of pressure causes it to slam into the opposite wall, and Severa into one of the table’s legs with a loud smack.

“OW!”

With the snow out of the way, Cynthia sits down on the only upright chair, and just stares at the wall for a while. Severa leans back slightly into the bed, and takes stock of the room. The fireplace is barely more than a fire pit with a chimney, there are three wooden crates stacked up next to it and behind Cynthia, the other two chairs knocked over in front of her makes three total, but oddly enough, there’s only one, very small bed. She poses a question to her companion

“How do you want to decided who gets the bed?”

“Y-you can have it. I’ve had enough f-fighting for today.”

“Yeah. We have all of tomorrow to fight with each other.”

Severa gets up to take off her armour, and amuses herself by watching Cynthia attempt to make a flat surface with the three chairs which appear to have been made out of three different kinds of wood, with four different kinds of nails. One of the chairs has a nail sticking out of the backrest, which Cynthia finds out to her detriment once she lays down. Severa finishes off her chest armour, and places it on a pile with her gauntlets and shield at the base of her bed, then stays there to grab four blankets from beneath the bed, then throw them at Cynthia, saying

“These might help.”

“Hmph.”

They go to bed without another word. Severa is impressed by how warm and soft the sheets are, though, and Cynthia is out like a log.

 

\--

  
Cynthia starts awake in the middle of the night to pained sobs. She keeps her eyes closed in case Severa’s watching, but can’t hazard a guess as to WHY she’d be crying. She didn’t seem very sad when she saw the dead feroxi citizens, but she rationalizes Severa’s crying as not being able to apply makeup in the morning, or something daft like that.


	2. Stopping by Woods on a Heroic Evening

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heroes are so cool, they're the first thing that Cynthia wants to think about once she wakes up; however, even if Severa is stuck with her, she can't stand this much idiocy.

Cynthia awakens first, a spring in her step as she leaps up to face the new day. She shakes out her robes, then attempts to move their impromptu door so she can frolic about outside. With a great exertion, she shoves the table a tiny bit away from the doorway, creating a tiny opening which she sneaks through, and into the majesty of white. Everything outside is coated in a layer of snow, and a thick one at that. Cynthia tries to trudge forward, the knee-high snow impeding her progress, and thanks Naga that her sage robes are so thick. Still, if she’s going to become the hero of this frozen wilderness, too, then she needs to get in lots of practice, starting now! With a triumphant leap, Cynthia bounces into the dry, flaky snow to prance around.

Severa doesn’t hear anything as she wakes up, the snow a perfect muffler for Cynthia’s excited ambulations. The first thing she thinks of is those two boxes that she didn’t page through yesterday. They could be full of food, more blankets, or firewood, but first Severa has to accomplish the herculean task of actually getting out of bed. She lifts up one corner, and the frigid air rushes in, forcing her to immediately close it again. The hard sigh she lets out is not one of anger, but of frustration of the warmth smothering her. With her eyelids drifting in and out of sleep, she throws the sheets across the room, her whole body angry and full of the sensation of diving into an icy pool of water. She stands up slowly, and wraps one of the blankets around her. Clearly, the hero armour is completely insufficient as protection from the cold, especially the mini-skirt exposing her thighs. All of that is veiled behind the thick fur sheet, and she’s even wrapped it up into a half-toga thing to be especially stylish, but her arms are still cold. Maybe those boxes contain more clothing.

While pinning the blanket in place with one hand, Severa gets a chair set up next to the crates, and happens to notice the sheets she gave Cynthia scattered on the ground, and a tiny opening in their ramshackle door. Sighing contentedly at the thankful absence, Severa returns to her task, and examines the box. It’s a solid crate, nailed shut with large spikes which are impossible to loose with just a finger. Severa sighs again, much less contentedly, and gropes around the entrance for their shovel, before she realizes that Cynthia was using it last, and now it’s buried under all of the snow, prompting another, much angrier sigh. Severa then has to get up, abandoning her blanket robe for speed’s sake, exposing herself to the terrible outside cold, and swiftly nabs her axe. A dash back to the chair, and she wraps the sheet around herself, cozying back up immediately.

It’s a simple enough matter to remove the crate’s cover, and she finds something very unexpected inside. A sloppily sealed letter, pine resin used instead of wax sits perched upon cast-iron dishes, including a tea kettle, large stew pot, small bowls and lots of cutlery. Severa didn’t even think they’d need some of this stuff, like a dog-iron for the fireplace, a fire poker, a wood axe, a small shovel, and a highly aromatic metal box full of smoked bear jerky. Severa places the andirons in first, tastes some of the delicious, hearty and pine scented jerky, then focuses her attention on the letter. She’s beginning to form some assumptions on who those people were, but keeps an open mind no matter how obvious the answer might seem. Even though it’s REALLY obvious.

She removes the pine resin seal with the curved edge of her short axe, mostly awkwardly rubbing the large axe against the tiny letter’s rough parchment, but displaces it anyway, setting her axe down. The letter is scrawled out in fancy, barely legible font, but Severa manages to decipher it anyway, reading the contents out loud to keep track

“Dearest Edvige, we hope your zib… siblings? can help you built… Ugh, it’s BUILD... your house before winter comes along. The jerky we’ve packed used the last of that Chon’sin wood we got. Yes, it’s still SUPER delicious. Try to gather as much wood as possible, and remember that pine needle tea recipe Gran showed you! Also, even though you won’t need it, I’ve made a map showing where our house is, so make sure to stop by whenever you can. I love you, dash Ma.”

Severa’s eyes start watering, this sweet little letter is so indicative of a loving family, and three of them were just cast from this horrible world. She feels awful for eating their jerky now, too, and realizes that she has to bring the news to Edvige’s mother, even if it means freezing in this wasteland. After all, Severa and Cynthia failed to protect them. Severa wipes away her tears with the blanket, and braves the cold to put on her freezing armour. She looks at the remarkably well-realized map, on the other side of the letter, then tucks it into a hidden pouch she installed to keep valuables. Her two weapons easily slot into their leather straps with the woodcutter’s axe, and she’s all outfitted for a long walk, if her clothes weren’t so thin and frigid. Maybe later she can make warmer clothing out of these blankets, but she might as well let Cynthia know about the letter now.

A quick duck under the tiny opening Cynthia’s made, and Severa is nearly blinded by the light reflecting off the almost pristine snow coating everything, except a cavorting figure almost directly outside of the stone hut. Cynthia shouts while gesticulating with her elfire tome to no one in particular

“I hope this burns you up! Nah, too polite. How about “Your wretchedness shall consume you in hellfire!” Ooh, that even tells them my weapon’s name!”

Gods, Cynthia is seriously lame. This letter can wait if it just means deflating her ego slightly for a little while, it seems like death can’t even put a damper on it. Severa speaks out to Cynthia

“What a nerd. Seriously, Cynthia, we have WAY more important things to worry about, like things that will actually help us survive?”

“A heroine is EXACTLY what we need, meanie! Not that a cynical ice queen like you would understand.”

“Excuse me?! I saved your life TWICE, and I’m the only one trying to do anything productive! You know what, I don’t care if you freeze out here,”

Cynthia suddenly interrupts, gradually goaded on by Severa’s icy nature. There’s no way that this girl could’ve been sad about those dead civilians, and she needs to know that.

“Yeah! You don’t care about anything! You’re like some sort of emotionless, psychopathic villain!”

“If being able to properly compartmentalize grief makes me a villain, then so be it! You know what, I’m done trying to get through to you. Stay out here and freeze if you like, but I’m getting firewood.”

“I will, and good riddance!”

She can’t do anything productive?! Fine, Cynthia’s going to find some food. The sage’s stomach had been growling periodically through her excited galavantings, so she has extra motivation to find food, then purposely not share it with Severa.

Halfway out into the woods, Severa clears the ground with her boots, railing at herself for forgetting to tell Cynthia about the letter. Not like she deserves to hear about it, but Severa isn’t exactly confident about a twenty to thirty mile journey through bear country without an escort, or at least a fool she can easily outrun. Getting back to the ground, it certainly isn’t too interesting, but she spies a stick here and there, which could be used for kindling. After that argument, though, Severa doesn’t feel good enough to try to chop down an entire tree, although she’ll certainly have to do that, since Edvige didn’t seem to have that at the top of her priority list. Pushing aside more of the snow, she reveals a patch of mushrooms, their caps continuing to grow even in the frigid weather. She recalls hunting for mushrooms with her mom at a young age when a large group of the Shepherds were coming over to visit, Cordelia using the opportunity to educate Severa on different kinds of edible and poisonous mushrooms. These mushrooms looked edible, and there was a large patch of them, so Severa marks the spot by sticking her wood axe into the adjacent tree, then returns to the cabin.

Cynthia is nowhere to be seen, so Severa sticks around to warm herself up. It’s not dangerously cold, especially since she is wearing gloves and everything, but warming herself up does feel really nice. The feeling gradually returning to her extremities, Severa sighs when she remembers that once she leaves the blanket, it’ll feel even colder than before, so she whips it off to make sure she doesn’t get complacent. With the cooking pot in hand, Severa squeezes it and herself through the tiny opening, and considers moving the table so it’s easier to get in and out, but now that she’s back in the open, it doesn’t seem like much of an issue. She disappears back into the woods.

The bear hunt is not exactly going as planned, but Cynthia’s confident that just meandering around will produce some result. She finds a neat hill to run up, jumping to the top in order to shout

“I claim this mountain in the name of heroism and Cynthia! Hehehe…”

Then is almost startled by a sudden movement in the forest. A deer was trawling through the crushed underbrush, searching for morsels, but ran into her as well. It’s just behind a tree, standing stock still, maybe to determine if she’s a threat, so she stands stock still, and readies an elfire. The bolt of fire strikes the deer, incinerating its head in a pillar of fire, but even with that ‘tiny’ oopsie, Cynthia still chalks this up as a definite win. This’ll show Severa how awesome heroes are! With a grunt, she hefts the deer up on one shoulder, then realizes that she isn’t entirely certain where the hut is… She just walked over that hill, right?

The area gradually becomes more and more familiar, but Cynthia isn’t entirely sure if she should turn left or right at this junction, but after sitting there for a few seconds, she hears the distinct sound of a tree falling down, the crackling of a large pine shifting, the snapping of branches in its way, and eventually a loud smack into the ground. Cynthia walks out of the woods back into the hut’s clearing, and watches Severa idly smacking the pine tree’s limbs off to bring them inside. Cynthia tries to pretend to look past this impressive feat, but can’t seem to fit the deer through the tiny opening, so Severa berates her with

“Bite off a little more than you can chew?”

“Sh-Shut up! I’ll get it through!”

Severa tries to adjust the table condescendingly in order to force Cynthia to need her, but the table is really way too heavy, and Cynthia’s just trying to shove it along the ground, so it fits through after enough pushing. Severa decides just to ignore Cynthia, and sits on the ground to continue pulling all of the pine needles off of this branch. She’ll make some pine needle tea later, just a cup full should be enough, so she sets that branch and the others on the dog-iron, then realizes that the giant wire structure filling most of the crate isn’t a support for the box, it’s a rack to hang pots over the fire. She moves that over, too, letting a bunch of cutlery fall from one of the displaced pots into the bottom of the crate. Cynthia squeezes herself through the opening, and immediately looks around at the room, exclaiming

“Woah, where did we get all of this stuff?”

“This crate.”

Severa says as she gestures towards the open crate, its lid set to the side, next to the lit fireplace. While Severa puts the mushrooms into a platter and warms up the snow for water, Cynthia flops the deer over to the side, and as she starts to move one of the chairs, Severa says

“Make sure you don’t knock over that cup of pine needles, I’m going to make some tea with them.”

“Hey, I could do that!”

Then Cynthia gently moves Severa to the side to dig through the crate, prompting a

“Hey?!”

and quickly finding a small platter and a knife. Cynthia chops up the pine needles and cleans them with some snow left on her, then dumps the platter into a pot. Severa looks over disinterestedly, but lets Cynthia take some of her water anyway. The sage excitedly chatters while hanging the pot over the fire, saying

“This is going to be the best pine needle tea you’ve ever tasted!”

“Right, because pine needle tea is really difficult to make.”

“Grr…”

Severa leans over to see if she’s actually doing anything special with the water, and sees that the pine needles are in the water already, so she says

“No, that’s not how you make it.”

Then grabs the pot’s handle to remove it, but Cynthia takes some offense to that, stopping it from moving by grabbing Severa’s hands and yelling

“What?! This is MY tea, get your dirty mitts off!”

“You’re going to burn the pine needles! Get them out of the fire!”

“No, you have to boil the water!”

“First! You boil the water BEFORE you put the needles in!”

“Right…”

“Gods, Cynthia…”

Cynthia relinquishes her hold on Severa, allowing her to remove the pot. Cynthia glares at her, but Severa comes to a realization and suddenly hits herself in the face, covering her eyes in embarrassment as she slowly says

“Why… Why are we even fighting over this? We have an entire pine tree right outside of our doorstep.”

With a bright smile, Cynthia responds

“Well, this does save me from having to go out in the cold again!”

“Thanks, Cynthia.”

The prissy little jerk can be mean sometimes, but that tiny smile, full of warmth and happiness almost makes bearing her insults worth it. Still, Cynthia tries to make everyone happy, and that includes mean people like her, so it’s not too unexpected. Severa’s next words are definitely unexpected, though, with almost a tender note to them

“Hey, if you’re making the tea, how about I cook the venison and make us mushroom stew?”

Completely forgetting her original goal of bragging about the food that Severa won’t be able to eat, Cynthia smiles brightly at the thought of a well-cooked meal, and says

“Sure!”

before she can stop herself. Severa goes over to the large deer, and begins trying to skin it with the tiny knife Cynthia found, so Cynthia just grabs all of the pine needles out, sets the pot back over the fire, then goes over to Severa with larger knives. Cynthia says

“This might go faster if we do this together, actually.”

“Hmph. Sure.”

 

\--

 

They’ve skinned the deer and dress its meat, preserving most of it outside the hut, but inside of the crate, with a lot of snow. Severa organized the cutlery and other utensils on top of the second crate, which they moved into the middle to use as a table. Cynthia almost forgot about the boiling water, but eventually made the tea anyway. Severa’s cooking some of the raw venison in a pot while Cynthia examines the mushrooms, daring herself to eat one of them.

‘Maybe Severa’s actually trying to poison me, knowing that I won’t know which mushrooms are poisonous? Nah, then she wouldn’t be trying to make a stew, ‘cause that’d neutralize the poison. They could drop their spores, and try to grow inside of me! But once it’s cooked, then the spores will be cooked, too, so that can’t be what she’s trying to do.’

Severa looks back over to Cynthia’s intense expression at the platter full of mushrooms, then sighs at Cynthia’s ridiculousness. In such a melancholy, though, she spies the crate, and remembers the letter she took from the other one. She decides to show it to Cynthia, saying

“Hey, Cynthia. You should see this.”

“Muh? A letter?”

“Yeah. It’s for the civilians we found dead here.”

Cynthia looks at it with determined grimness, but takes the letter regardless, and immediately begins reading. Her reaction is immediate and obvious, starting with surprise, but slowly moving to just sad. Severa flips the meat casually, not overly concerned with getting an even bake, and looks back to see Cynthia on the opposite side of the letter, tracing a path with her finger. She stares up at Severa, and says quickly

“We’re going to that house soon.”

“Duh, but let’s eat first, we can’t make it on an empty stomach.”

“Wouldn’t going right now be more heroic and noble?”

“If you could see through your delusions for a moment, recall that we’re both starving?”

Cynthia makes an unsatisfied sound, accepting her argument, but glares at Severa for the insult, and responds with

“Hey! I’m not delusional! Heroes are totally cool, hardworking, and kind!”

Severa turns her head slowly with the smuggest look possible. She snidely says

“Oh, so if you’re so hardworking, after you’re done making the tea, would you mind chopping apart that entire tree I dragged in front of the house?”

“Yeah! Anything to show you up!”

Cynthia angrily pours the hot water into their two cups, and Severa double-checks the soup to make sure that all of the ingredients are in place. They’re both feeling slightly better about this relationship, but neither of them say a word as they wait for their tea to cool down. Cynthia repeatedly blows on hers, Severa stares at the floor to think. Cynthia takes a sip of it while it’s still hot, Severa just glares at it. Eventually Cynthia downs her entire glass in one shot, and Severa sips it properly, unfortunately forced to admit that it is quite competently made. She enjoys the tea, definitely a welcome heat in this winter cold, but it causes her to ignore the sage’s restless staring around to the point that Cynthia has to cough to get her attention, awkwardly saying

“Erm. Severa. Where’s the axe you were using?”

“Right, it was still hooked to my belt. Here.”

“Thanks! That tree’ll be pulverized before you know it!”

“Yeah, sure.”

They exchange competitive glares before Cynthia practically crawls through their door into the biting air. Severa smirks when she hears a loud

“Brr! Woah, it was REALLY nice in there…”

then gradual, loud chopping. Severa relaxes, and sets about re-organizing the hut, folding their blankets and sheets, then putting the rest of the wood onto the fire to finish up the stew. She tries not to contemplate Cynthia while busying herself with simple tasks, but is certainly looking forward to her frozen and embittered expression when that huge tree defeats her.

 

\--

 

“Gods, Cynthia.”

“Huff… huff… Oh, hi Severa, ready to eat your… words…”

The tree had been chopped to perfectly shaped pieces, all except the last two feet, which already had many indentations scored into it. Clearly, Severa could no longer accuse Cynthia of being idle in her heroism, as the sage had cut the nearly seventy feet from the cabin partly into the woods in just a few hours, without a chopping block. Severa narrows her eyes, and sighs, but still begrudgingly hands over the soup to Cynthia, saying

“Only if you eat this soup. You look dog-tired.”

“No… I’m HERO tired!”

The silly exclamation makes Severa blush, now that she can’t pretend that she doesn’t have any respect for Cynthia, who takes the soup and spoon to eagerly ravage its contents. Severa begins collecting some of the wood, but skeptically asks Cynthia, just in case there was some kind of trick

“So, you really did just chop up most of this tree. Huh, I guess I underestimated you.”

Between slurps, Cynthia responds, just as kind

“Hey, you got the tree here in the first place! And thanks for the soup.”

“Cynthia. Maybe we could try… Being friends? That was SLIGHTLY mean of me to send you out here to cut up wood for an hour…”

“Ehehe, sure! Oh, does this mean I get to show you all of my cool hero poses and moves?”

“Ugh, just PLEASE try to push your luck, will you?”

Severa finishes collecting an armful of firewood, then heads back inside. Cynthia was actually just about to launch into a speech, but disappointedly collects firewood instead with a loud complaint

“Aw! You could’ve TRIED to sound more sarcastic!”

They put the firewood inside, then go to sleep more peacefully than they have in a while, and with full stomachs to boot. Severa leaves some wood in the fireplace, the value of a nice, warm fire thoroughly learnt.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Who knew that removing just two Shepherds would have such a terrible ripple effect? Robin mopes most of all, because the tactician's job is to keep everyone alive, and this tactician seems to be a perfect failure.

“Captain, Sumia and I have c-completed our two-mile patrol of the site of the battle.”

Still in the dueling grounds, the Shepherds have been searching for the better part of a night and a day for their lost members. After the risen had been driven off, Robin did roll call, and came up short two very capable fighters. The tactician had refused to believe that they could’ve simply perished in battle, so immediately drafted a search plan, and set out to search an entire couple of acres without assistance, on foot. Chrom couldn’t persuade the troubled tactician to stay, and so was abandoned to organize everyone else around that plan himself, with Frederick and Lucina’s help, of course.

“And your report?”

Sumia and Cordelia’s grief has hit the camp hard, without Sumia’s constant care for the horses, and Cordelia’s constant care for everyone else, morale was at an all-time low. This was only exacerbated by the lack of Cynthia, who always knew how to cheer up the rest of the camp. The Shepherds also hadn’t realized how much they had relied upon Severa’s constant pessimism to point out the worst situations, since no one was mean enough to mention that Cynthia and Severa could be dead, they hadn’t yet planned for that.

“W-we s-still haven’t found a-anyone.”

“Breathe, Cordelia, we’ll find them. Remember, Tiki, Nowi, and Nah are still out there. It’ll take more time because of this blasted weather.”

“Right. I- I’ll be in Sumia’s tent if anyone n-needs me.”

Chrom knew that they needed some time, but just the fact that their entire camp could be brought down this easily scared him. Of course, Robin could probably make up a plan to lift everyone’s spirits, but as explained through a map and an uncomfortably long presentation, all blame rested on the tactician, even if no one else agreed. Chrom shed a few tears just thinking back to that horrible, self-deprecating “tactical” meeting. The lord turned to Frederick and Lucina to get their input on the pegasus knight’s report, saying

“The manaketes ARE still searching, right?”

Lucina has been speaking with the two Morgans and helping them organize the search parties, so her grimace and slow answer is cause for alarm

“Not… quite. They were searching earlier, but only Tiki is able to stay out in this snow for any amount of time. Nah and Nowi are warming up in the mess tent.”

“Right… No matter how much I’d like to, we can’t push everyone to their limits.”

Frederick interjects

“That would be most unwise, yes, but given this camp’s state without Cordelia…”

but before he can finish, Chrom interrupts, shifting the subject tactfully. It was clear that Frederick’s tangent wasn’t going anywhere, and he was just trying to hide his own sadness. Chrom quickly says

“Actually, speaking of her, why isn’t Cordelia with Gaius? He was just as devastated as she was.”

“Cordelia and him had a fight. Apparently, she screamed something about him not taking this seriously enough, then ran off. He’s eaten his way through most of the camp’s sugar, mostly in the form of pastries or candy.”

All three of them cringe at that mental image, and Lucina coughs to bring up the next order of business. She starts with

“Well, we should probably have dinner soon. Would you like me to assign the cooks?”

“Yeah, that’d be good, thanks.”

Lucina leaves the tent, and Chrom sighs with weariness. Even with his wife, he puts up the facade of being held together, but he slumps into the table when it’s just Frederick, and sighs heavily to say

“It’s just so much harder without Robin. I’ve relied on my tactician’s counsel for almost everything.”

“Robin is truly an asset to our army, but we need to go through with this plan regardless. Patience is truly what we need most today.”

“I know, I know…”

They review the basic search formation, but can’t work up the nerve to command their army, or to really analyse anything. Maybe it has to do with their stomachs growling, but Chrom proclaims right then and there that the army WILL accomplish this plan tomorrow.

 

\--

 

“Kjelle. You were crying, is there anything you want to talk about?”

“No, I wasn’t, training is more important that that.”

“I heard you clearly from outside of the tent.”

Kjelle sniffs, still facing away from Lucina, so the lord walks over to comfort Kjelle with a hug, wrapping her arms around the knight’s waist. She tries to speak as comfortingly as possible

“It’s OK, even Chrom cries. You’re strong, but you don’t have to hold it all in.”

“Y-yeah…”

Kjelle surprises herself with a single, wracking sob, but quickly regains her composure to try to explain away what she’s feeling. It’s perfectly normal, Lucina’s right, like always, so she speaks, confidently, but warily

“They were decent sparring partners, training them was actually enjoyable. Cynthia just has infinite energy, and Severa always tries her hardest with everything she does. I never expected to lose girls that strong here.”

“Kjelle, honestly, I don’t think anything could kill those two. We’ll find them.”

“How can you be so sure? Severa HATES Cynthia.”

“Well, I think Severa just finds her annoying. Once they find some common ground, they’ll be fast friends. Maybe even more than that.”

Kjelle spins around in Lucina’s arms to see the slight blush on her face. The knight grabs Lucina with one hand, but doesn’t let go of her lance in the other, resulting in an awkward hug, exemplified by her conspiratorial grin. Kjelle says

“Aha, I can see what you’re trying to imply there. Yeah, it was pretty foolish of me to get that upset. You’re right, as always.”

“I’m just glad you’re feeling better.”

The blush and tiny smile Lucina gets from that is enough to remind her of why she married Kjelle in the first place, especially given Kjelle’s response

“T-thanks, but q-quit it with the sappy stuff!”

Lucina just kisses Kjelle on the cheek, then says

“I’m glad we got this chat, but I need to prepare dinner.”

“Of course. Good day.”

Lucina leaves without another word, and Kjelle continues practicing, sneaking a wistful glance back at Lucina once the lord is gone.

 

\--

 

Tiki flies through the chilly air, her thick scales just barely enabling her additional time in the cold. She’s ranged out further than any other search party so far, and reasons that she’ll have the best chance of finding any trace of them this way. Sure enough, at the far corner of her vision, she sees an odd gray pillar rising through the trees. Of course! They’d need a fire to keep warm, how come she wasn’t looking for this earlier? In fact, as she approaches, high up in the clouds, she sees a tiny figure moving around a fallen tree, probably chopping it for firewood. She’s still rather far away, so she doesn’t get her hopes up, but breaks cloud cover anyway, eager to check out this tiny hut. What she doesn’t expect is to feel a jolt of electricity from behind, then two strikes of a powerful lance. She tries to spin in midair, but the damage has been done, and she falls from the sky, quickly blacking out from blood loss.

 

\--

 

Cordelia sits in Sumia’s tent, trying to distract herself from the troubles of the world, but she still needs to apologize to Gaius, he was right that she needed to calm down about this, and that is exactly what she’s been doing with Sumia. Speaking of the plucky pegasus knight herself, she steps through the tent flap with a tea tray, a teapot and teacups. Cordelia smiles nicely, appreciating the sentiment with a short question

“Ah, which kind of tea have you brought?”

“I think it was one of Maribelle’s recipes? She made a comment about bear blood, but I’m mostly sure she was kidding…”

“Since it’s Maribelle, she’s definitely kidding. She’s got an… interesting sense of humour, to say the least. Did you know that she once sarcastically said that her greatest dream was to become a filthy barbarian?”

Sumia sits down on one of her stools, and places the tray on a miniature table in the center of her tent. She replies earnestly

“Well, yes, but I’d rather not gossip about someone who isn’t here.”

“I didn’t mean it as an insult, but I appreciate your attitude. Would you rather speak of horses, like you do with Sully?”

While Sumia responds, Cordelia pours a cup of tea for each of them

“Well, our discussions quickly turned kind of silly, and besides, you only like pegasuses, right?”

Tasting the delicious tea, Cordelia made a mental note to ask Maribelle about it later, and quickly responds with

“Oh, right. Well, I did use a horse in my dark and bow knight classes, but you are correct, they were more of temporary companions than anything else.”

Sumia strove to remember what had been bothering Cordelia, besides of course t-their missing daughters, but she wasn’t about to mention that either. Instead she just kept conversing, saying

“You really went through those classes fast, Cordelia! It took me way too long to get through just the war cleric class, but at least I got a horse again when I was a great knight.”

“Well, the hardest part is really just changing your mindset. As pegasus knights, we try to dodge everything, but armoured classes force you to judge blows and decide which ones to block. It’s really just an interesting puzzle.”

Sumia looks kind of sheepish at Cordelia’s analytical style, since she just sort of does what feels like it’d work

“Right… I usually just let people hit me, honestly…”

“Well, it isn’t JUST about that, honestly, I had a lot more fun in the sorcerer class, since you have to subtly use shadows and trickery…”

That was it, shadows, thieves, right, Gaius! Cordelia said she needed to apologize to him, and Sumia honestly didn’t blame her, that was kind of some mean shouting. Since Cordelia’s voice had kind of trailed off into the background for Sumia, she says

“Right! I remember now, you were going to apologize to Gaius!” Just slightly too loud, and when she sees Cordelia’s obvious wince, she just responds with “Um, or, not, if you don’t want…” trailing off awkwardly at Cordelia’s hardened expression. She lets out an impressive sigh, then says, reluctantly

“Yes, I do need to do that. Thanks for reminding me, and for the tea.”

Sumia continues to smile deflatedly as Cordelia leaves the tent, realizing that she ruined a perfectly fine moment. She considers going out to check the icy wastes again.

 

\--

 

With Stahl, Gaius, and Lon’qu hard at work in the kitchens, Lucina goes back over to meet with both Morgans and their wives, although Noire is timidly hiding from the current fire-tossing contest going on between Vaike wielding the resistance-increasing Tyrfing, both Morgans with fire tomes, and Nah in dragon form, who is being egged on by her mom. Lucina smiles at this most interesting way to generate heat, and is especially surprised that Vaike is managing to deflect every fireball aimed his way. She watches the action for a moment, it most closely resembling a very literal game of hot potato, before interrupting to ask the two Morgans

“Morgans, what time did you tell Tiki to get back?”

One of the Morgans is very nearly blindsided by a fireball, but Nah shields him by eating it, launching herself over the table and nearly tackling Vaike to the ground. The male Morgan scratches his head and stares at his sister, who almost does the same before actually remembering to respond with

“Oh, she just said that she was going to search by herself until sundown. I tried to stop her, but she was VERY insistent.”

Male Morgan practically interrupts with

“Yeah, she didn’t even turn into her human form to tell us this, too! Are you thinking that we should send out a search party for her, too?”

“No, I just wanted to know when it would be acceptable to… resort to more drastic measures.”

The mood of the game completely ruined by the enormous display of negativity, both Morgans stare at the floor, and an air of defeat pervades their side of the room. Sensing this, Vaike tries to lighten the mood, saying

“Har! Maybe you three can think up some more plans with those huge brains of yours once you’ve gotten some proper grub.”

Nowi joins in, making faces at Vaike to mock him with words, too

“Grubs? I LOOOVE eating bugs! We should go foraging in the woods, Vaike!”

“Ugh, I meant…” He catches a glimpse of Nowi’s ridiculous face, and slowly puts two and two together with a variety of “Um…”s and “Wait…”s, eventually settling on “Aw, you’re just making fun of me! Lay off it!”

The mood has been restored to happy levity, Nowi laughing heartily at Vaike, Nah rolling her eyes at her mom’s antics, male Morgan teasing his wife, and female Morgan approaching her wife with a comforting hug, saying ‘No, I wasn’t in any REAL danger, honest!’ softly behind the table. Lucina notes that the situation seems to have been defused, so asks Vaike

“Actually, is the food available? I believe we’re all very hungry.”

Vaike smiles broadly, no longer upset if he could help someone out of the doldrums, so he shouts across the tent to Lon’qu, saying

“Squire! How’s the food coming along?”

Lon’qu’s red-faced response is

“Oaf! I told you to stop calling me that!”

“Well which title do you WANT? Protege? Apprentice? Partner?”

“NONE OF… Actually, partner is fine.”

With a silly, extremely sly smile, Vaike shouts back

“Aw, that’s sweet of you!”

Lon’qu hides behind a counter, trying to conceal his massive blush, but also required to move the potatoes out onto said counter. Stahl almost trips over the embarrassed man, and Gaius just smirks at the extremely cute display. Stahl announces, somewhat redundantly with half the tent already at his counter

“Erm, the potatoes are done, if anyone…”

“Thanks!”

Nowi skipped to the front of the line by not taking a plate, snatching up as many fries as she can with just her hands, then running off to try not to burn off said extremities. Lucina decides to leave in order to tell the rest of the camp about the food. She spies Cordelia entering through a flap near the kitchen part, but is much more distracted by her now-visible breath. The fireball tossing really was doing a lot to warm everyone up, she supposes.

Cordelia enters near the kitchen, and gets a concerned smile from Stahl before homing in on her husband, who attempts to avoid her gaze. It’s an awkward exchange, but she manages to wordlessly explain that she wants to talk outside of the noisy tent.

They step into the chilly evening air, Gaius shivering in his thin, but very clean thief attire, and Cordelia covered in what looks like Sumia’s old sage robes. She speaks first, before Gaius can try to apologize again

“Gaius, I’m sorry for freaking out like that. You were right to try to distract me. Also, please take this scarf, you look like you need it.”

“Thanks, and you’re sure you’re not still mad?”

“Definitely not. I don’t deserve someone as nice as you if I’m going to yell at them.”

“To be honest, though, once I heard Severa was missing, I was about ready to scream, too. Don’t go blaming yourself.”

With a sigh, Cordelia embraces Gaius, and whispers into his ear

“I am so, so sorry, I didn’t even consider your feelings in my outburst. You don’t have to forgive me so easily.”

“Hey, I was just as rude. Let’s just put it in stone that we both love Severa with our whole hearts, and make it even, OK?”

“That sounds nice.”

They share a loving embrace, both equally emotionally reliant upon each other for just that moment, as Cordelia has an almost traitorous thought, mentally appending ‘and Cynthia’ on after Severa’s name. She sheds a few tears, and Gaius tries to be strong, but by the time Lucina has returned with the rest of the camp, they’ve both wiped off the other’s tears.

 

\--

 

During the shepherd’s slapdash dinner of extremely skillfully cooked potatoes, uncooked ale, and little else, Chrom stands before the crowd with an announcement. He starts off shouting

“Attention, everyone!”

Which quiets even the furthest corners of the tent for his next statement

“Tomorrow, six o’clock sharp, we’ll be setting out using Robin’s search method. Make sure that you’re always in a party of at least five, and keep an eye on your map. Healers, you’ll want to listen to Lissa on how to use your rescue stave…”

“STAFF!”

Lissa ‘helpfully’ corrects with a shout, earning a disapproving, but amused glance from Maribelle, then lets him continue with

“On how to use your special glowy stick…” Chrom punctuates his joke with a leer towards Lissa, accompanied by a chortle from most of the crowd, and continues “... properly, and everyone make sure to wear LOTS of warm clothes. That’s it, but also try to get to bed early.”

As he sits back down, the general mood of the room grows warmer, slaps on the back a bit harder, and laughs a little louder as most Shepherds are excited for the chance to actually do something, the lack of Robin, Cynthia, and Severa less depressing now that they can help out somehow.

Say’ri doesn’t celebrate, instead sitting off to the side, next to Lucina. They exchange an awkward glance as the Chon’sin princess asks

“Any news of Tiki?”

“I’m sorry, as far as we know, she’s still far afield. She left independently from the rest of the search party.”

“Ah. I see.”

Say’ri looks even more downcast than usual, withdrawing into herself, so Lucina tries to brighten the mood, saying

“If you’d like, you could have a sleepover with Kjelle and I tonight.”

“No. You’ve done enough.”

The bitter feeling of regret filling her mouth, Lucina watches her step out into the night. Perhaps if she had said something better? Well, Say’ri keeps to herself most of the time, so it might be better for her to have this personal time. Lucina takes a mental note to check up on Say’ri in the morning.

The still-muted party ceases early, everyone eager for the morning.

 

\--

 

A lone, dark figure strides through the wastes, its thick coat and hood shielding it from the elements. It holds a single rescue staff, but carries a replacement, two tomes, and a sword just for insurance. The figure almost continuously checks the stave for anything in the vicinity it can rescue, casting and failing whenever a snowflake passing through makes it look like the staff has detected someone.

The figure holds its head high, but only to stare at the staff. It is a failure of a tactician, and has directly caused the death of two of its most skilled and determined soldiers. Maybe if this wretched cloaked being can at least find the corpses among the snow, Cordelia, Gaius, Sumia and Henry won’t hate it forever. Another tear streaks down its face, thinking of everything to regret in this moment. A tiny skirmish, with enemies barely worth registering, and the tactician made one crucial miscalculation, one poorly worded request, and Severa and Cynthia are gone.

Of course, the cloaked being admits that the two are more than competent enough to survive on their own even out here for a very long time. On the other hand, though, this type of terrain is extremely easy to get lost on, just giant white plains with even more whitewash constantly raining from the sky, making an effect so bad that even the worst explorers get easily lost out here.

Wait. How come this figure isn’t lost? It has a map, of course. A map which shows a river right about here… Erm, maybe without the riverbank… Oh gods. Robin is truly and completely lost as well. Maybe moping by running off into the wilderness wasn’t the most stellar idea.

 

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't worry, cliffhangers aren't THAT awful, you'll just have to wait a week for the resolution.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Severa and Cynthia get some finality to the Feroxi family's story.

Severa awakens in a huff. Sure, she doesn’t SMELL bad, with the chill of their current environ, it’s very hard to sweat, but she definitely doesn’t look good anymore. It was all right just yesterday, since she didn’t care about what Cynthia thought of her, but now this issue needs to be addressed. Severa swiftly, stealthily puts her armour on and moves past the peaceful girl slumbering on three chairs. She takes a moment to examine Cynthia’s contented posture, all swaddled up comfortably in their many blankets, before crawling under the table to go outside. The chill bites right through her armour yet again, and she sincerely wishes that they could’ve been stranded literally anywhere else. Even the volcanoes she’s had to fight in would be preferable to the constant biting cold from every direction. Severa berates herself for coming out here in the first place; there had never been any hope of finding makeup. She paces around the entrance, trying not to freak out. It felt like her face was covered in beetles or something disgusting.

Cynthia leaps off of her comfy chairs, announcing to the world

“I’m all ready to go!”

She gets her robes in order, notices that Severa isn’t here, then ducks under the table to get outside. Wait, Cynthia had forgotten to compliment Severa on the delicious soup! She notices Severa just pacing there immediately outside of the hut, so announces

“Severa! I forgot to say this yesterday, but that soup was really good!”

She also gave her brightest smile, partially since she really did appreciate it that much, but mostly to attempt to see another one of Severa’s own bright, but composed smiles. Not that she could ever admit that…

Severa turns around with a start, and hastily wipes the single tear off her face before Cynthia sees it. The girl’s compliment is unexpected, but not unwelcome, and Severa unfortunately smiles at the recognition of her skills before she can stop herself, saying

“Really? T-thanks… I mean, we need to leave soon.”

“Yeah. Oh, where are we going?”

“Just follow me.”

The now well-matched pair trudges out into the snow, pine trees gazing down at them with their long shadows, the sun having yet to rise far from its soft, white pillow on the far horizon. The snow beneath them is far less forgiving, it’s dry, hard, and crunches with every step. Cynthia falls into the habit of stepping into Severa’s footprints before getting bored and starting to let her gaze wander off.

The lamentatious leader stares at the tiny map, making sure to mark off with her hand where they’re going, eagerly anticipating the first of twelve different landmarks. Most of the landmarks are just boring rocks, though, but there is one labelled as “That one chasm you and Aurelia fell in as children”, which makes Severa more misty-eyed than usual, so she looks back up and concentrates on trudging along. A task easier said than done when Cynthia decides to say

“Severa, you should try to be more heroic!”

“By that, you mean ‘flashy, pompous, and self-aggrandizing’?”

“Erm… No, I mean helpful and fun! A big part of being a hero is cheering everyone up!”

“Really? That’s what you’ve been trying to do?”

“Of course, silly!”

Severa very nearly turns around to see if there’s even a hint of joking on Cynthia’s face, but instead has to acknowledge that there are actually people that nice in the world. Maybe Severa should keep track of this girl even after they get out of here. She responds only with a mumbled

“Hmph.”

but smiles internally. They continue trudging along, but it doesn’t take long before Cynthia shouts

“Over there! There’s someone lying in the snow!”

Severa looks over to where Cynthia is running, and spies red fabric partially buried in the brown snow. Brown, as in dried blood. She sprints off, armour clanking around her.

 

\--

 

When Tiki fell from the sky, her entire life flashed before her eyes, and with a life that long, it took a very long time. She looked back upon her adventures with Mar-Mar with happiness, but she had already moved on since then. What was difficult was looking back on her time with the shepherds, and especially Say’ri. The princess was so stuck in her duty as the voice’s protector and disciple, but in just a few weeks, they became fast friends. Tiki recalled the first few giddy weeks of falling in love, feeding Say’ri apples, trying to read through the princess’s sappy, supposedly anonymous love letters without crying, the warmth in each of their increasingly close hugs, and finally their first kiss. It was a first for both of them, and so warm that even just its memory lets Tiki stay warm for a little while longer.

She crashes into the ground, upset that she can’t do any more, but satisfied with what she’s accomplished. She makes a tiny attempt to move her limbs, but the motion only makes the snow fill into her excruciatingly thin clothes more, to the point that she can’t feel anything besides the cold. Her tears freeze onto her face, and her head goes dizzy and light as she fades from consciousness.

 

\--

 

The girls immediately recognize it as Tiki. Severa gently lifts her off of the ground, cradling the woman as if she were a baby. The shield on her arm makes the movement awkward, but is the least of Severa’s thoughts right now, especially as she shouts to Cynthia

“How much of that elixir do you have left?! We need to get back to the cabin and start a fire!”

“M-most of it, Y-yeah!”

They begin sprinting back to the tiny hut, driven by their desire to save at least one person. Each stomp into the unforgiving ground makes them just that much more determined.

 

\--

 

Severa slides Tiki smoothly under the table into Cynthia’s waiting arms, a first for their inconvenient doorway. Cynthia has piled up all of their blankets into one relatively smooth mattress, and sets about starting a fire as Severa crouches through. Severa sighs and commands Cynthia otherwise, saying

“You have some medical training, use your elixir while I start the fire.”

“Sure!”

Severa lights it precisely and quickly while Cynthia begins on her own job, checking for Tiki’s heartbeat. The manakete is still very much alive, her status as a divine dragon allowing for her incredibly impressive constitution, but the wounds on her back need dressing. It also looks like there are tears frozen to her peaceful expression. Gently turning Tiki over, brushing off the snow as she does so, Cynthia addresses the wound. Tiki’s dress has been mostly shredded and burnt, so it must’ve been more than one attack. The wound isn’t open anymore, it’s been scabbed over, but by its depth, it’s clear she’ll have a scar for a while. Cynthia flips Tiki back over, being unable to deliver any more treatment. She notices the comforting fire, and pushes the bed and its occupant slightly closer for warmth. Then she notices the lack of Severa. She’s standing by their table, watching Cynthia, but crouching. It’s clear that she’s about to run off, so Cynthia says

“Hey, what’s the big idea?”

“We can’t wait another day to tell that family about their dead, you take care of Tiki while I find them.”

With wide eyes, Cynthia gapes up at Severa to say

“Promise you’ll be back soon?”

“I promise.”

Severa lets out a huge sigh, as upset with this situation as anyone can be, and ducks under the table to leave for good. She sets off with a spring in her step, setting out at a good jogging pace. The snow cracking doesn’t bother her anymore, she just needs to finish this mission as quickly as possible, then they can focus on taking care of Tiki.

Cynthia props Tiki up on a pile of blankets, and slowly ladles water and elixir into her mouth, making sure that her body can actually process it before starting the next spoonful.

 

\--

 

With a grumble, the tactician climbs out of the tiny abode crafted overnight. Little more than a hammock stretched between two trees, it nevertheless did the job quite well, protecting the thin plegian from any potential bears. The next course of action was to find a vantage point, and try to get some bearings. The tactician clambers up slightly higher into the sproingy pine tree, gaining a clear picture of the surrounding countryside. It’s mostly trees, nothing too interesting to look at, but on the horizon there’s a dark shape clearly visible, along with some smoke from the shepherd’s camp in the vicinity. That’s kind of disappointing, Robin’s moping retreat didn’t even make the gulf in distance more than an eighth of a day. The blizzard must’ve been more confounding than even the most determined of tacticians would admit. A sigh rings out before Robin flops to the ground, ready to set off towards camp.

 

\--

 

The next landmark passes quickly, Severa barely noting it on her map as she jogs as fast as possible. It’s only been a few miles, she tells herself again, you can’t slow down now. She smiles to herself, safe in the knowledge that she’ll have a new distance running record down, even if no one else will know about it. All this running is also helping her keep relatively warm, so that’s another reason to be thankful. Snow still isn’t falling, so if it turns out that these villagers have been massacred too, at least she’ll be able to find her way back. She tries to banish those dark thoughts as she jumps over the penultimate landmark, the ravine Edvige fell into.

 

\--

 

Tiki awakens to a warm location, and the sight of an excited young lady’s cheery smile. Wait, this is Cynthia, one of the girls they’re…

“Neat! You’re awake! Good thing, too, I only had two uses of my elixir left when we found you, and you needed both! How are you feeling?”

Like I was revived from the dead, Tiki thinks, but instead actually takes stock of herself. Her extremities are all in a ton of pain, gradually growing back the areas which frostbite had taken, the elixir gradually working its magic. She bluntly says

“I am in a great deal of pain, but it is a pleasure to see you. I can bring you and Severa back to camp once I have recovered. Is Severa out collecting firewood?”

“Uh, actually, she probably won’t be back until tonight, but don’t worry about the firewood part, oh, and do you want pine needle tea? I kinda got bored just taking care of you, sorry about that…”

Cynthia scratches the back of her head nervously, and goes over to grab the cast-iron teapot. Tiki tries to sit up a bit further exasperatedly, then asks sternly

“Where is Severa?”

“It’s… kind of a long story.”

“Have you parted ways? I have heard that you two do not get along. Is that still the case?”

“No, definitely not! Severa’s really cool! She made us this really good soup out of just mushrooms and venison, actually. I was more surprised to find out that she actually has emotions, tehehe!”

Tiki knows for certain that Cynthia is attempting to hide something, with her nervous mannerisms, but she is acting convincingly cheery. Unfortunately, the manakete has to admit that she doesn’t exactly know Cynthia well enough to make a truly accurate judgement, but she needs to know where Severa is. She says

“Cynthia, it may be difficult to recount, but the shepherds must have both you and Severa back, so please inform me of her location.”

Cynthia lets out a long sigh, then begins telling the story beginning from the battlefield.

 

\--

 

Severa spies another very simple looking cottage between the trees. She’s finally made it, and now just has to remember to be sensitive about this. Just tell them, then leave. It’s not that hard of an errand. She stomps up to the cabin, but stops for a moment to regain her breath. Perhaps running all the way here in her full armour wasn’t the greatest idea after all. There aren’t any visible windows, so she just leans against one of the stone walls, careful to not let any of her weapons hit it. She takes a long sigh of cold, wintry air, which immediately returns to cool the rest of her down as well. It bites right through her armour, and feels like a spear made of snow on her exposed thighs. This time she sighs exasperatedly, then steps over to knock on the door.

She raps firmly, the wood expelling a loud, distinct knocking sound. There is absolutely no response, not even the annoyed shuffling of feet towards the door. She waits for a moment, then tries again, this time much harder and for longer. Again, nothing. The wind whispers past her ears and the building, making quiet noises of their own, but nothing is audible from inside. Quickly tiring of this extremely lame game, Severa pushes on the handle-less door, which gives very easily, revealing a slightly lit interior. There’s a doorway on the other side of the spacious cabin, but it doesn’t appear to have a visible door. Severa glances around, and nearly tears up at the sight. An older man is slumped over a table, no visible injuries besides his hair on-end, obviously an electrical attack. A middle-aged man is slightly off of the other chair, his torso messily slashed through, guts adorning the floor beneath him. By the other door lies another electrified person, this one a woman just slightly older than Severa herself. Over by the fireplace is a middle-aged lady pierced through the chest, hands still gnarled around a fire poker. She isn’t the most well-armed, though, a young man lying near a claymore of rather impressive make lies dead from a chest wound in the center of the room, almost directly to the left of her is. Lastly, in a corner, still sitting in a rocking chair, is an older lady holding a fire tome, but missing her head. Severa tries to fight the urge look around for her head, and actually noticed two burn marks near the other doorway. These were valiant people, trying to fight to their last breath. Whatever it was that killed them would pay dearly. Severa walks over to the claymore, its massive size totally unfamiliar to her own fighting style, but it is clearly well-maintained, and the hilt is engraved with a family name. She grasps the huge blade by its hilt, her hands falling easily into well-worn grooves. Whatever it was that killed them, this blade should take it down. Severa walks outside to practice with it.

The first few practice swings are disappointing, but Severa gets used to the weight quickly by adjusting her stance to wield it like an axe. The only difference is the length of the handle and blade, so she uses more swings rather than overhead chops, since she can’t use the handle as leverage anymore. She swings once more, then idly tries to sheath it, remembering too late that she doesn’t have a sheath for it, and doesn’t want to go back into the house to look for one. Bringing up that issue, though, Severa isn’t exactly sure how she should carry it. If, hypothetically, she did have a sheath, it’d be too large to fit on her waist or back without running into doorways. She tries fitting it into the crook of her arm, and with the crossguard on her shoulder, it isn’t TOO inconvenient. She supposes that a gigantic sword like this will never be particularly convenient, though.

Another issue is that of FINDING whatever killed the Feroxi family. Wait a moment. It’s attracted towards places with people in them. People like Cynthia and Tiki. Severa starts off at a sprint, claymore held tight to her shoulder.

 

\--

 

KILL. DESTROY THE HUMANS. KILL. GRIMA WILL DESTROY ALL. SMOKE IS RISING FROM A SMALL BUILDING. FIRE MEANS HUMANS. MUST KILL.

It takes but an instant for the monster to decide. Its black mount descends from on high, and it readies its arcthunder tome, attaching the brave lance to its mount. The first swoop is fruitless.

BUILDING MUST CONCEAL HUMANS. DOOR IS ENTRANCE. MUST FIND DOOR.

The risen noisily flaps about, trying to find the entrance, and eventually finds a wooden panel sunken into the wall. Its pegasus lands neatly, but the pair simply stare gormlessly instead of taking an action, not used to having to deduce this kind of puzzle.

UNUSUAL PANEL INSTEAD OF DOOR. SIMILAR TO OTHER BUILDING. MUST DESTROY PANEL.

Finally, the dark flier strikes with its arcthunder tome, initially missing the table, but hitting something inside.

Cynthia was giddy at first, even announcing to Tiki ‘Oh, t-that must be!’, the sound of a pegasus’ wings brought to mind her mom, come to save them, but this couldn’t possibly be one of the shepherds. Attacking without provocation? Not so much a thing that heroes never do, but something that they would SEVERELY reprimand someone for doing. Cynthia crawls through the opening, prepared for the lecture of someone’s life, and immediately regrets that decision.

HUMAN. KILL. MUST KILL.

She manages to mostly dodge the first blast of arcthunder with a roll to the side, but her robes protect her from most magic attacks anyway, so it’s fine. She draws her fire tome, and launches a blast at the awful creature, who takes flight spectacularly, and just in time to completely dodge the assault. It rises so far that evening sun, already vanished behind a tree, illuminates its black wings with an orange glow. With this new ease of movement, Cynthia can’t possibly hit it like this, but begins firing randomly and running after it anyway.

Severa, having sprinted for half of the trek already, has dropped to a fast jog, desperately trying to regain her failing breath and burning chest. Then she sees fire streak through the sky, dissipating like cheap fireworks, or a spell designed to deal damage at close range. She begins to sprint again, her hunch proven completely correct.

 

\--

After a while, Cynthia realizes that each dodge roll takes something out of her, but when she spies the brave lance at the dark flier’s side, she realizes that it’s just a matter of time before it’s used instead of…

“GAAH!”

The electric shock hurts, but doesn’t harm her permanently. In fact, it shocks her out of thinking about anything else besides the battle. The risen still has plenty of leeway, though.

ELECTRICITY INEFFECTIVE. MUST USE LANCE.

Then brings out the brave lance. Cynthia just readies herself for the first sweep. The risen leans down to the pegasus’ side, and executes a swift dive aimed directly for Cynthia’s position. She dives out of the way just in time, covering her face with snow, but remaining unharmed. She barely manages to roll awkwardly away to avoid the brave slash, so can’t respond with her own attack. The dark flier takes its time to fly back up into the sky, allowing Cynthia a few potshots at it. Two hit, doing literally no damage to the flying magic user. She cringes awkwardly, realizing that her only hope is to dodge every hit until Severa shows up, assuming that Severa hasn’t been held up, at all. The dark flier flaps overhead, then dives almost straight down, forcing Cynthia to guess where it’s attempting to strike. She leaps correctly, then catches herself as the risen swoops past harmlessly, then magically turns on a dime to attack again. It stabs downward, so Cynthia just jumps away from it. She futilely fires at it again, but getting up repeatedly in this snow is extremely tiring, her hands smashing straight through the dried crust and into the white powder below. She can’t give up, not with Tiki counting on her, not with her mom, Robin, and all of the other shepherds counting on her to get back safely.

The next few strikes are just routine, her limbs shaking, frozen, but not failing. Not yet. Not until she sees a hysterical hero running out of the woods. Not until she sees Severa leap through the air, and cleave the risen in two with the largest sword she’s ever seen. Not until she watches the ground come up to meet her, and definitely not until Severa is cradling her, carrying her back into their cabin. Only then does she faint, along with Severa.

 

\--

 

All of Tiki’s limbs protest at her current actions, but dragging her twin saviours into the hut, and leaning them on the crate by the fire is the least she could do for their immeasurable bravery. What she does next, though, is find a giant sword just slightly outside of the cottage, inscribed with the name ‘Dossenius’, and pull it inside. Before she leans against the wall next to the fireplace, she drapes blankets over the two girls, and is as surprised as anyone else when they both pop back awake, Severa immediately freaking out that Cynthia isn’t in her hands, and Cynthia making the motions of casting a spell before her shaking hands indicate that she isn’t holding one. They both gasp for breath, but recover fairly quickly, with Severa going so far as to grapple onto Cynthia’s shoulder to make extra certain that she’s safe. Tiki smiles at them, and says

“Cynthia, Severa, I must thank you from the depths of my heart.”

“No problem! I- it’s w-what heroes are for!”

Severa nods her head in acknowledgement, but doesn’t loosen her grip on Cynthia in the slightest. Cynthia gazes at Severa’s fixed blank stare, the stress they’ve gone through clear and obvious, but Cynthia’s recovered, so what’s bothering Severa? Cynthia asks that exact question, saying

“Severa? Are you all right?”

“Cynthia, they’re all dead.”

“What?! Who?”

“The family whose children died?! Where do you think I got that gigantic sword!?”

“Oh.”

Severa tries to regain her cool when addressing the stiff, similarly devastated Cynthia, but continues ranting, saying

“Gods, and you were fighting it, too…”

Severa just glares at Cynthia, anger laced with sadness, provoking the response

“Well, what else could I have done?! I needed to save Tiki!”

“Yeah. You’re right. I should’ve stayed with you two.”

“Hey, it all worked out, didn’t it?”

“I SUPPOSE…”

Severa softens her gaze, and loosens her grip, but Cynthia finally knows a way to make her feel better. The sage embraces Severa, frigid armour and all, saying

“Seriously, we’re all safe now, and Tiki can even take us home!”

Severa hugs back, trying to make her embrace feel less than enthusiastic, and wards Cynthia off by saying

“Hey, I- I’m not upset anymore. You can let go.”

“Yeah, actually, your armour is really, really cold!”

“You big baby, at least you’re not WEARING it.”

Cynthia releases the other girl, and pretends to have to warm herself up through her thick robes while Severa edges closer to the fire. Both of them are blushing at the friendly teasing, but Tiki is trying to hide a warm smile. This is most certainly a welcome respite from a very tiring day. She announces

“Although I’m sure you two would love to continue hitting on each other, let us rest in preparation for our journey tomorrow. We are miles afield, a simple flight for a winged dragon, but a difficult path for a grounded one and two humans.”

Choosing to ignore Tiki’s remark about them hitting on each other, Cynthia instead asks

“Huh? Tiki, you don’t have a dragonstone?”

“No, I apologize, it must have been misplaced when I fell.”

Tiki lowers her head slightly, accentuating the apology politely, but Cynthia and Severa pay no heed, the former excitedly drawing closer to the really neat claymore, and the latter rolling her eyes while sarcastically announcing

“Aw darn, I was SO excited to be held in a sharp, cold, dragon claw, suspended in the air for miles.”

Slightly flabbergasted, Tiki responds

“Truly?”

“No, of course not! Tiki, you can have the bed, Cynthia and I can sleep on the floor. Hey, help me move it over by the fireplace.”

Hastily putting the sword back down, Cynthia says

“Right!”

and they leap into action, Tiki somewhat flustered by their completely odd social graces. It’s not entirely dissimilar to Robin trying to talk to her in her sleep while resembling Marth so much, that tactician just has an odd way of growing on you. She sighs at their youthful energy, and graciously accepts the bed, saying

“You two truly are my heroes. Thank you very much.”

“No problem!”

Then the pair of girls stare at the pile of blankets remaining, trying to piece together the obvious puzzle of sleeping arrangements. Severa vocalizes first, asking

“How should we split up the rest of the blankets?”

“Well, there aren’t really enough for just one person, but all of them are large enough to fit two people…”

Gazing back up at Cynthia with a smug look, Severa slyly says

“You just want to sleep with me, don’t you.”

“I- I never!”

“Whatever. I’ll allow it.”

“J-just because you said that, I’ll stay as far away from you as possible!”

Severa mentally adds ‘as if’, but decides to make that known once their cuddling won’t be interrupted with Tiki’s poorly-disguised, excited giggling. The fire behind them burning down gradually, the two girls set up a makeshift mattress out of blankets, and Cynthia settles in next to the opening under their door while Severa takes off her armour, putting it and her weapons on the far side of the fireplace. As Cynthia starts trying to sleep, she announces

“Goodnight, Tiki and Severa!”

“Sure.”

There’s no response from the bed, though, and Severa glances over to see what looks like a sleeping manakete. It’s kind of amazing how fast she fell asleep, actually. Severa sighs contentedly as she makes her way over to the comforting pile of blankets, and eases her way into a deep sleep.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Any feedback is highly appreciated, especially grammatical and characterization errors.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The adults finally get moving, and two out of three girls are quite overjoyed. The other takes a while to wake up.

Gerome had gone to sleep late, and awakened earlier than the rest of the camp, like usual. More unusually, though, he was sleeping in his older brother’s tent. Yarne had had a few nightmares, mostly about Cynthia not returning; Inigo was as anxious as usual, so Laurent had rearranged his tent to allow all four boys to sleep there. Gerome glanced up to the small bed, with Laurent sleeping peacefully, and made sure to slowly break free of Inigo’s hug to take a walk in the morning air. The tent flap swiftly moves aside with Gerome’s gloved hand, revealing the biting wind on the other side, which encourages him to shut the tent flap behind him quickly. Unbeknownst to him, Laurent is also waking up, and nearly ruffles Yarne’s hair before realizing he and Inigo are still asleep.

The chill winter breeze cuts right through Gerome’s clothes, and he nearly turns around to put his armour on before he decides to be more cautious than not. It’s a new day, but the sun has yet to rise. Dawn is silent, melancholy, and distant, exactly what Gerome needs right now. Each step into the hard-packed snow gives him more space to think, and he ponders on the situation at hand. Few people would miss Severa, but even fewer knew what she was actually capable of. Cynthia was loud and boisterous, but she could cheer people up with her ridiculous antics. With a loud sigh, Gerome takes a wide circuit around Laurent’s tent to check on Minerva. The wyvern’s nostrils are just slightly poking out of a huge pile of blankets, looking somewhat like a crocodile in a very comfortable river. He’s still worried, though, as the flaming coals they gave her must’ve cooled down by now. With a cautious hand, he rubs the bit of her nose which is exposed to the morning cold. Oddly enough, she’s still quite warm, and snorts pleasantly in response. He watches the pile begin to shift, then thick quilts fall into the snow as she crawls out from underneath them. She rubs her neck against Gerome’s chilly form, and he smiles openly, letting his hands run over each of her rough scales delicately. He says

“How cold was it, minervy-kins?”

Minerva responds with a low, gentle growl and a slight wave of her neck, and Gerome nods sagely, then speaks

“Good. I know it would’ve been much easier for you to stay back at port Ferox, but thank you for coming with us.”

With the wyvern’s briefly closed eyes and sweet cooing noise, Gerome certainly feels slightly less horrible for taking a lizard to this frozen tundra. Maybe if they do manage to find Cynthia, Severa, and Tiki, he’ll feel completely less horrible. He doesn’t hear the stomp of heavy boots stepping around the tent for his own voice, which states

“All right, Minerva, let’s get you some food, then we can drill until six.”

Minerva lets out an unsatisfied rumble, but keeps quiet as Gerome nestles her saddle into place so as not to alert him. Laurent rounds the corner, catching Gerome off guard as he prepares to pretend to have something else to do. The older brother simply says

“Minerva, a little help, please?”

Minerva obligingly curls around Gerome, forcing him to confront Laurent for whatever social activity he’s concocted. Gerome sighs, saying

“Laurent, I’m not in the mood for…”

“I’m sorry to interrupt, but hear me out regardless. Miriel, Cherche, Frederick, and myself are preparing a healthy breakfast for the camp, and closest progenitors would be very disappointed if you didn’t show up. Given that you will feed Minerva before practice,” Laurent says this with a pointed gaze, then continues “the food should be ready thirty minutes into your training session.”

“Fine.”

“Thank you.”

His duty fulfilled, Laurent pets Minerva’s nose before turning around sharply in the snow, replicating the signature spin of his sage class. Before Laurent can round the corner, though, Gerome has to let something off his chest, saying

“Wait.”

No matter how pushy Laurent can be while telling Gerome about their shared chores or forcing him to actually talk to people, he’s always been an excellent listener, and Gerome relies on his older brother more than he’d like to admit. Besides, for this question, Gerome needed someone with a logical and thorough analysis, not Inigo’s constant unconvincing assurances. Laurent merely waits for Gerome to continue patiently, pacing back to give him undivided attention. Gerome, with a bit of a worried inflection, says

“What is your opinion on the state of Cynthia, Severa, and Tiki?”

“They are fine.”

“You can’t just assume that! This tundra is merciless, and we can’t know what has befallen them.”

Laurent testily pushes his glasses back up his nose, lingering there for but a moment before continuing

“That was no mere assumption. Severa and Cynthia are among the two most competent of our shepherds, more than capable of handling themselves even in this unfamiliar environ. I have not had the time to do a thorough analysis on Tiki, but she is a manakete, which suggests an increased rate of survival.”

“You’ve done a thorough analysis on Severa and Cynthia? Could you recount it to me?”

“In order to not waste time, I shall escort you and Minerva to the barracks for her feed in the meantime.”

“Sounds good.”

Significantly less anxious, Gerome motions for Minerva while following Laurent through the thickly packed layers of snow, every analytical description of Severa and Cynthia’s abilities a strange kind of comfort. The crunching below them drowns out the tiny part of Gerome which still feels the need to be completely negative, and he lapses into a concentrated, logical calm.

 

\--

 

“Laurent is approximately three minutes and thirty-two seconds late.”

“Patience, dear. There’s plenty of work to do before he arrives.”

“Still, a knight’s duty is to be punctual, and preparing this meal is of the utmost importance.”

Frederick slices the boar meat before him with a sharp knife, separating the huge strips into much more palatable slices of bacon. He continues, saying

“The nutrition present in yesterday’s dinner is nothing short of reprehensible.”

With a slight chuckle, Cherche replies

“You’ve been talking to Walhart, haven’t you. Besides, this was Laurent’s idea in the first place.”

Miriel embarrassedly pushes her glasses up her nose, pacing by the table full of vegetables, but replies anyway, saying

“True, my studies on the subject of proper portions of vitamins and minerals has been excessively lax. Perhaps this will be the impetus to spark my own research.”

Cherche sneaks away from whisking her bowls of egg yolk to cinch Miriel about the waist in a tight but friendly hug. She whispers into Miriel’s ear, saying

“It’ll be fun to hear your research, but please try to get to bed before dawn once you begin.”

“O-of course…”

Miriel turns red with embarrassment, but appreciates the gesture. She’d rather like it if Cherche revealed her feelings physically more often, even if she had yet to find a logical reason for doing so.

Frederick glances away from the personal scene, finishing up his work with the pork as Laurent finally arrives. Miriel welcomes him by saying

“You are four minutes and fifty-eight seconds late.”

Cherche sticks her head out from behind Miriel’s extremely large hat, and gives Laurent a jokingly weary smile before breaking away from Miriel to resume cooking. Laurent responds easily, saying

“Thank you. Just as I predicted, my analysis on Severa and Cynthia’s wilderness survivability took exactly five minutes to relay.”

Frederick adds, stretching the strips of bacon on metal racks

“To whom were you speaking?”

“Gerome. He has an often pessimistic view, so I attempted to rectify it with logical observations.”

Laurent quickly moves over to Miriel’s side and retrieves his recipe book, and as she waits patiently, she adds

“In my research, it is usually ineffective to convince someone to alter their mood with logic. How did this situation differ?”

Laurent and Cherche share a secret smile at Miriel’s scientific enthusiasm, even towards her own children while Frederick sighs and moves back to readying his portion of the meal. Laurent and Miriel begin a rigorous discussion of emotional biases while organizing the vegetables precisely. The shredded broccoli florets go into Cherche’s scrambled eggs, as do the raw turnips and sautéed onions. They also have an overabundance of chives, which are being liberally spread over Frederick’s bacon.

Frederick knew that this was a good idea, but the dynamics of Cherche and Miriel’s family are still very odd. He thought he had seen everything with just Emmeryn, Chrom, and Lissa constantly pranking him; this was clearly proof that he had more to learn, just as Laurent’s detailed reports often showed him. The steward places the racks of bacon over one of the flaming ranges right next to Cherche’s eggs. Miriel appears to be distracting her family with some trick involving burning single strands of hair, so he leans over checks on their eggs just to practically smack into Cherche, who is doing the same thing. He quietly says

“Sorry.”

In an effort not to interrupt Miriel’s lecture. Cherche smiles neatly back, but returns to Miriel’s side as soon as she is able.

A few moments pass, and Miriel just seems to be bringing out more and more different kind of string, so Frederick decides to interrupt in order to get his point across. Not meaning to be rude, he says

“Ahem, excuse me for interrupting, but I require someone to watch the bacon whilst I wake up the rest of the camp.”

Miriel appears insulted, but Cherche defends him by saying

“Of course.”

and moving over to do so; Laurent watches over the slow-cooking eggs in the meantime. With his bacon in skilled hands, Frederick nods and exits the tent with nary a word. The seventy-five percent complete family goes about its business, nearly burning all of the food in the process.

 

\--

 

The light smoke is only rising from a few locations, so either the camp’s on fire, or very few people are awake at five thirty in the morning. At least, Robin thinks it’s five thirty, with the weirdly long days here it could even be seven thirty. It couldn’t be earlier than eight thirty, though, since Robin definitely made sure to wake up at around the same time each day. Sort of. A plan could be made once the tactician’s tent was reached, and apologies would come directly after that.

With each comfortable stride back towards camp, Robin made up strategies to get the shepherds back on their feet. It wasn’t overly likely that Chrom had managed to completely wreck a roughly vigilante group he and Frederick had commanded alone for many years even before Robin joined, but this tactician wasn’t about to put the possibility off the table. Starting from scratch would be kind of an interesting challenge, especially since Robin would have to re-recruit everyone, and the children would be even harder to…

Robin attempted to keep walking at a level pace, but managed to think back to that horrible strategy which managed to lose Cynthia and Severa, two extremely bright and powerful warriors. While the tactician should’ve been prepared for a failure like this, it hit hard to be so near the final victory against Grima. That dragon wouldn’t have any of this tactician, but it seems as though he had already succeeded in destroying two of Robin’s friends.

The distance between each step became shorter and shorter, but before this wretched person’s movements could cease entirely, Robin facepalms. Well, even if they had both been stabbed through and left to die, they wouldn’t give up. They’d both been through nearly literal hell, and survived, it didn’t make any tactical sense to think this situation would be any different. With new vigor in those steps, Robin strides back towards camp.

 

\--

 

The ruckus in the mess hall is palpable, but Chrom’s more than happy. The shepherds are properly motivated again, in no small part due to Cherche’s experienced and excellent cooking. He doesn’t really want to give another speech, but Lissa promised not to interrupt him this time. He’s about to stand up to start speaking; however, he sits right back down when Basilio gives him a kind look and stands up to speak in his deep, husky voice. He starts with

“Hey! Everyone, listen up! We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us, so buck up and get ready. We’ll find Severa, Cynthia, and Tiki yet. I for one will be having a VERY stern word with a certain tactician who ran off somewhere,” His inflection switches quizzically with the ‘somewhere’, but returns to an encouraging growl with, “but we’ve got this!”

He sits down to a few guffaws from Flavia and Chrom, applause from everyone else, and a dry glare from Anna, who sits with the largest mug of ale she could get her hands on. Chrom stands up for the less glamorous part of the speech, saying

“I would give you a longer pep talk, but given the ‘excellent’ memories of a few of our members, I’ll just state some reminders instead.” He hears a loud ‘boo’ from Vaike’s table before Lon’qu shoves his fist into Vaike’s mouth. Gregor doesn’t get the hint, though, and shouts calmly

“Gregor is old, yes, but he is not forgetting something so important!”

Chrom tries not to roll his eyes, and pretends not to hear the comment by clearing his throat loudly before continuing

“Make sure to wear stiff, thick boots, the snow around here is completely unforgiving…”

“However, even if your footing is solid, there’s still the possibility of blindly walking onto a -omp-” Here Robin pauses to shove eggs and bacon into that tactical gob, forgetting too late that the shepherds haven’t seen hide nor tail of their Robin for nearly two days, and continuing heedlessly with, “frozen-over lake. Make sure to have someone with a spear or long stick prod the ground every so often. -omp- thankfully, there’s no chance of a lake just sneaking up on you or something.”

The snow-covered tactician smiles at the joke, then watches as the shepherds’ expressions switch from shock, to relief or anger. Robin interrupts Chrom’s shout with

“If there aren’t any blizzards, you can usually just search with your eyes, but it’s always good to double-check with your rescue stave user. However, DURING a blizzard, you’ll need to rely entirely on them, and make sure they stay warm enough to continually check their staff.”

“ROBIN! WHERE… GODS! You’re!”

Chrom nearly trips over the banquet table before him, leaping over it to make sure it really is Robin before the rest of the tent begins their own exclamations. Basilio is generally heard over everyone else, shouting angrily

“You runt! I’ll have some choice words with you after we’re done with this!”

Lissa is very excited, grabbing onto Robin’s shoulder along with Chrom, perhaps to make sure the tactician isn’t about to slip off again before shouting

“Robin’s back! Robin!”

Yarne’s rather loud, startled voice carries over the rest of the crowd briefly, saying

“W-what if it’s not really...!?”

but even he excitedly stares at Robin. The tactician announces

“All right, it’s exactly six o’clock, I’m assuming that’s when you wanted to move out?”

Chrom awkwardly scratches the back of his head, even that tiny detail they decided on without their tactician was completely transparent. He replies

“Yeah, you want to go, then?”

“Yup!”

The tactician cheerily leads the group outside, stopping to be glowered at by Anna for just a moment before they separate into groups to scan the countryside. The largest group is of course Lissa’s, consisting of her brother and most of the leadership of the army. Brady’s group would be better described as his cousin, Lucina’s group, since she and her girlfriend will more than likely be commandeering command. Sumia and Cordelia have teamed up with their spouses and Stahl and Sully. If anyone could keep up with Sumia and Cordelia’s shared desperate fervor, it would be those brave cavaliers. Libra seems to have attracted an odd group, sharing it with Nowi, Virion, Ricken and Tharja, but he has a lot of experience dealing with children. Both Morgans share a group, but even though they’re both using staves, they’re completely different classes. Laurent and Yarne seem willing to trail along after them and their wives. Finally, the still cranky Anna and her slightly cowering spouse are taking Walhart, Say’ri, and Gregor.

With that, the search begins.

 

\--

 

The actual search is much less eventful. Each step into the blistering wilderness is colder and more dangerous, but Robin put a lot of thought into the group assignments to make sure everyone was with people they could talk to. Thus, each group is full of lively, or at least polite conversation, a welcome warmth in the fiercely whistling wind. Certain people search desperately, fearful of the potential loss. Sumia checks her staff over and over again, but can’t feel even a slight increase in the number of rescues possible. Cordelia hits the ground every so often with her lance to check for ice; anxiety creeping up steadily, especially when Gaius refuses to stay close. He’s off checking every rock and tree, even with the extra clothes Cordelia forced him to wear, he’s still lithe and fast enough to return to her side quickly whenever she calls. Henry nearly giggles at Gaius’ constant running around, but since he’s just as worried for his own child, he bites his tongue to stop that terrible reflex. Robin glances far and wide, confident in Anna’s skill with the rescue staff, but still far too self-deprecating. Say’ri stays quiet, hands close to her sword at all times, silent in her rage. The children from the future are all upset in their own ways. Lucina is determined, charging forwards through the snow with Kjelle. Brady, Owain and Inigo can barely keep up, but Gerome is keeping a watchful eye to make sure they don’t go too far afield. The two Morgans stomp through the snow, their unimpressive heights doing them no favors for either visibility or mobility. Nah almost wants to just turn into a dragon to scoop the two of them up, but leaving behind Noire would be really sad, especially considering the poor company she’d be left with. Yarne is typically paranoid, but being relegated to staff duty makes him even more so. Laurent is trying to explain why they aren’t doomed, to no avail. The wind howls around them all, emphasizing the distance between the parties, and acting as a horrible prelude to a blizzard.

 

\--

 

Between then and their arrival at a certain random hut in the woods, there are a few trials and tribulations, but they are mostly forgotten by the time the shepherds are reunited.

 

\--

 

Sumia feels a tiny change in the pulse of her staff. The group trudging around her, desperately huddled together to keep warm was not equipped for this kind of weather. Cordelia braves the snow with a scarlet face to complement her wild hair, whipping around in the wind, but none of the rest of the party is that stubborn. Gaius has removed his cape and is wearing it like a very clumsy mask, especially when the wind picks up part of it and tries to tear away. Henry is lighting tiny fireballs to heat up Sumia’s hands so she can keep holding the staff, but with his red face and own freezing hands, she would tell him to stop if she could get a word out without the wind screeching through these trees tearing her words away. There’s a thick film of snow between Sumia, Sully, and Stahl, so their awkward, shuffling embrace is only slightly visible as she prepares to excitedly shout at Henry. The tiny pulse gives her hope. She knows for certain that there’s someone… Wait, some two… No, all three people! She screeches, trying to make her voice heard over the wind, saying

“TH--- A-- PEOP-- OV-- THER-!!”

Henry perks up, incapable of understanding Sumia despite his proximity in his sideways walk, but even Sully and Stahl knows that something’s up when Sumia stops in her tracks, puts away the rescue staff, and gets out a bolganone to point the way. A huge flaming gash is cut from the earth to spew enormous amounts of fire through the trees. The steam rises up from the snow, merely to be instantly extinguished by the raging blizzard, but the message is obvious, and the weary group breaks out into what could almost be described as an excited run. Night has set in, and combined with the snow, the visibility is so awful that Sumia runs into the side of the stone cottage. Cordelia finds the door first, but realizes quickly, despite her weariness, that it’s actually a table propped up against the wall. The rest of the group nearly starts when they see her crouch down and disappear into the hut.

Cordelia can just barely see. Coals still flicker in the fireplace. Right before her lies one of the most beautiful sights possible. Her daughter, and her best friend’s daughter, safe and sound. She is nearly entranced by their peaceful breaths, and just stands there with a proud smile on her face for a moment. With a quick glance around the room, she spies Tiki as well, sleeping like a babe on their only bed. She takes another step into the room, behind Severa and Cynthia’s heads to let someone else in, but sighs at her friends’ inability to enter. Oh well. She is more than relieved right now. Then she notices the position that Severa and Cynthia are in. They’re sharing a bed, which is fairly normal, but their warm and cozy embrace is a far cry from their treatment of each other before this ordeal. Cordelia nearly chuckles at the thought that something so good could come out of something so awful, but recalls that the children from the future are almost the embodiment of that. She sighs happily, then starts as Severa awakens. Cordelia feels as though she is watching an extremely private matter when her daughter begins weeping openly, then squeezes onto Cynthia even harder. She just barely hears Severa whisper over the wind

“Mommy… I… can’t…”

Then stops her outpouring of emotion with a loud, bitter sigh. Then Cordelia leans over into her field of view for a kiss on the forehead. Severa flinches back with surprise, jerking Cynthia awake with her sudden movement, but after her few gasping breaths, a measure to make sure this isn’t a hallucination, she leaps out of her blankets to pull Cordelia into a full, teary embrace. Cordelia speaks first, saying

“I’ve got you, don’t worry.”

Severa regains her composure quickly, saying

“You came! I mean, w-what are you d-doing here?! It-it’s the middle of the wilderness!”

Cynthia gapes for a moment, but excitedly shouts

“CORDELIA!”

and joins in the group hug. Cordelia replies with

“I’m so glad you’re both safe. It looks like you managed to find Tiki, too?”

Severa replies easily first, saying, with genuine happiness

“Y-yeah, we found her while we were… Actually, mommy-erm, Cordelia, it’s kind of a long story.”

Cynthia glances down to the ground regretfully. Cordelia regrets asking that supposedly simple question when she sees the poorly hidden and bitterly disappointed looks on Severa and Cynthia’s faces. Of course, Cynthia tries to respond brightly anyway, saying

“Well, see, we were walking around, and she was just lying in the snow! Crazy, huh?”

They hear a slight grunt from the door, so the sage and hero turn around to see Gaius squeezing through. As soon as he can see even slightly into the room, he says, quite loudly for his usually contained voice

“Severa! You’re all right!”

They embrace easily, the first time Severa has let him do that, and she replies with

“Of course I’m fine, someone had to take care of Cynthia.”

A semi-insulted

“Hey!”

comes from behind their makeshift bed, but Cordelia notices that a truly warm smile passes between them. She hides her own smile behind a hand, then says

“Gaius, is anyone else going to come inside? You certainly took your time.”

Gaius peers out from behind Severa to attempt a stern glare, and says

“We had no idea where you went! With the snow, and the dark, it looked like you just burrowed into the snow, or something.”

Gaius nearly gesticulates at Cordelia, but keeps one arm firmly wrapped around his daughter. She has another plan, though, kind of fidgeting out until she says

“Gaius, Sumia’s trying to come in, too.”

“Oh, erm…”

Gaius moves in front of the fireplace with Severa, and Cynthia screeches slightly to run over and help her mom up from the floor. She stares up to see Cynthia, and immediately leaps up, saying

“Cynthia! Oh, sweetie! You’re okay!”

“Mom! I love you so much!”

Henry crawls out from under the table-door as well, so Cordelia takes a step back, predicting that he’ll be able to get slightly further into the room, but Cynthia immediately grabs him about the neck in a fierce hug. They continue to exchange pleasantries, but Cordelia is distracted by a loud clank behind her. First she glances back over to Gaius and Severa to make sure they’re fine, then looks at the ground to make sure she hasn’t broken anything. Severa’s hero armour lies there, an assortment of weapons, and one extremely odd weapon. Cordelia absently picks up the giant sword. She’s never seen something of this size before; it’s so large that it nearly scrapes the ceiling when held aloft. By her estimate, it’s too huge to use in just one hand, and immediately tries to puzzle out a solution, before she notices Severa giving her an anxious look from across the room. She puts it down gently, then announces to the room

“We need to signal the other groups, then get back to camp. Could someone try to wake up Tiki?”

Gaius replies easily, breaking out of a pleasant conversation with Severa to say

“Whaaat? Already? What’s the rush?”

“Sully and Stahl are still outside, and the search was supposed to end three hours ago. I decided that we should continue on, since the blizzard slowed us down.” Cordelia gives a winning smile as she says “I think you can all agree that it was a sound decision.”

Severa sighs somewhat rudely, about to reply sardonically, since the shepherds have put themselves in danger for people who already had a means of getting home, but Cynthia giggles and hugs her parents even tighter. Severa doesn’t want to ruin her fun, so she goes over to try and shake Tiki awake. Cynthia continues talking at Sumia and Henry, saying

“Oh, so how’s my pegasus? We should make snowman once we get back, the snow out here is, like, all flaky and horrible! It makes crunching sounds if you step on it!”

Henry laughs politely, pulling back slightly from Cynthia’s enthusiastic hug to make sure he still has some unbroken bones by the end of it, then says

“Yeah, I noticed that on the way here too! It’s like a big dinner plate covering the ground!”

Sumia finally manages to get her arms around Cynthia’s so she can return the hug, and glances over to where Cordelia, Gaius, and Severa are trying in vain to wake up Tiki. She suggests softly

“Cynthia, Henry, how about we go outside to tell Stahl and Sully what’s going on? Maybe we could even play in the snow if the weather’s not too bad.”

“Yeah! Great idea! One sec, though. HEY SEVERA!”

“WHAT!”

“Do you want to play in the snow?”

Cordelia stifles a laugh, Gaius merely looks puzzled, Henry and Sumia smile encouragingly, and Cynthia looks happier than a dog with a very tasty bone. Severa nearly covers her face with embarrassment, no matter how much that honestly sounds like fun. Instead she just sighs, then tries to form a stern look, saying

“Hey! We still need to wake up Tiki!”

“Oh please! Our parents can handle that.”

“W-well, it’s cold, and we’ve spent way too long here already!”

“We’re just about to leave, and it’s not THAT cold.”

Why is Cynthia trying so hard to make something so childish sound appealing?! The expectant gaze of their parents is definitely pressuring her into this, but she knows that Gaius and Cordelia will be making fun of her for DAYS to come. On the other hand, they’ve never gotten a chance to just sit around and play before. She mumbles something unintelligible, rolls her eyes, then finally says

“Could all of you stop STARING? Gods! Also, I’m going to put my armour on first, so you better be ready if I get out there!”

“Tee hee! This’ll be the GREATEST snowball fight ever!”

Cynthia crawls outside as Severa moves over to latch on her armour. Gaius asks

“Um, honey, how would putting on cold metal suit help you out in a blizzard?”

With a slightly aggressive tone, Severa replies handily

“Well, I wasn’t prepared for a long trek through the snow, so this is all the extra clothing I have, thank you very much.”

Sully and Stahl, chill and red-faced, squeeze under the table, and Sully immediately shouts

“Damn ALL of you! You didn’t even bother to tell us where you were going, so Stahl and I searched the whole cabin before Cynthia told us how to get in!”

Gaius chimed in

“It wasn’t THAT hard to figure out, or are you saying that you have a blind spot to crawling people?”

Sully approaches Gaius with an upraised finger and a stern look on her face, intensely saying

“You expect me to watch your sorry behind, chuckles?! You’ve got another think coming there, and damned if I was going to last any amount of time outside without… erm… hugg-... stealing heat from Stahl.”

Cordelia giggles softly, glances back over to Henry and Sumia trying to start a fire, then resumes her own task of attempting to awaken Tiki. She hears Stahl say

“Well, I thought that it was fairly even. You’re pretty hot too, Sully!”

“Damn, Stahl! D-don’t just say stuff like that!”

Gaius laughs semi-quietly at Sully and Stahl’s shared blush, Stahl’s only coming into play once he slowly realizes the implications of what he said. Severa sighs and pushes her way past them to the outside while her mom shakes Tiki’s bed in irregular intervals. Stahl desperately tries to hang on to his dignity by saying

“Oh! Sorry, I didn’t mean it in that way! Not that you’re not, um, er…”

He doesn’t make any progress by the time Severa leaves the comfort of their warm cabin. As soon as she exposes her face to the chill darkness outside, another sudden chill smacks right into it. With barely any time to react, she jerks forwards into the snow just to hear Cynthia’s teasing laugh

“Hee hee! Stand and defend yourself, Severa! Our duel is nigh!”

Severa’s face is bright red, and not just from the cold. She screeches back

“That was ice, you lunatic! You could’ve bruised me!”

“Oops, sorry! It’s just hard to make snowballs out of this powdery stuff.”

Cynthia’s inelegant prancing around stirs up more of the dry snowflakes, but Severa finally gets up on her feet with a vicious glare. The sage stares back over at Severa, slowly drawing a few wild conclusions. She says, somewhat apologetic

“Aw, are you actually mad?” Severa continues glaring at Cynthia, slowly walking over by the side of the cabin. Cynthia continues, less apologetically this time, saying “I SAID I was sorry, hee hee!” and disingenuously approaches Severa, who’s facing the other way, and scrabbling around on the ground for some reason. Cynthia’s about to say something mildly mocking again, until she notices Severa stand back up with a mischievous smile on her face and an overly large, icey plate of packed snow in her hands. Instead, Cynthia, voice gradually filling with panic, says “W-wait, that’s a lot of sno-AAAH!”

“Yeah! How does it feel now!”

“You meanie!”

Severa chases Cynthia about the yard, poking her in the back at every opportunity with her fragile piece of snow. The snow crunches beneath them in the soft moonlight, their cares forgotten for just a simple moment. Cynthia tries to fake out Severa by leaping behind a pine tree, the skirt of needles forming a sizable amount of cover, but she can’t beat Severa in a sprint. Cynthia trips, falling into the pine tree with an

“Oof! Time out!”

“Huh?”

Severa, sprinting at full tilt, notices Cynthia’s prone form hidden behind the tree just in time to trip over her leg, and smash her own face into the pane of packed snow she was holding outstretched. It shatters completely, but Severa’s face doesn’t stop there, instead crashing through the snow on the ground, too. Cynthia rolls over to say

“Oh! Severa, are you OK?”

Although her voice is muffled greatly by the snow in front of her, Severa yells loud enough for Cynthia to hear

“Yeah, but you should worry about yourself! Falling like that, all the time, has got to hurt.”

“Um, you haven’t actually moved yet, though...”

Severa is mostly enjoying the lack of enforced physical activity of the moment. The amount of sleep they got amounted to little more than a catnap, but Cynthia doesn’t seem to mind, already leaning over and prodding Severa’s undefended back. She turns over laboriously, shoving her leather gloves through the snow to get her bearings, then gives Cynthia an annoyed look as she says

“Didn’t your parents suggest coming out here in the first place?”

“Oh, yeah! They… Get distracted easily.”

“Ugh. That’s just dishonest! We should march back in there and get them.”

Severa starts getting up, but Cynthia holds one of her hands down, saying

“Well, actually, I was kind of enjoying just, you know, being with each other.”

Cynthia almost sees Severa’s already freezing, red face grow even redder for a moment, but she must’ve been imagining things. Besides, it honestly was just kind of fun messing around with Severa, since she was acting so friendly, and Cynthia never wanted to see this side of her go away. That might be exactly what was happening, though, as Severa yanks her hand away unnecessarily roughly to stand up and stare blankly in every direction besides where Cynthia is. Severa says, uncertainty encompassing all facets of her voice

“Hmph. It’s kind of immature to try to play out in the snow. We should go back inside to help our parents.”

Mildly insulted, Cynthia responds easily with

“Hey! We just got out here! Besides, weren’t you having fun?”

All Cynthia gets in response is a falsely-exasperated sigh. Severa still feels hideous, and that’s while talking to someone she feels for immensely. She decides to repress those feelings until she can properly impress Cynthia back at camp; she really does deserve the best for surviving this wilderness abandonment. On the other hand, Severa can’t imagine Cynthia going out with anyone else at this point, so maybe she should just succumb to… huh? Severa starts as Cynthia’s arms wrap around her neck and waist. Her voice is slightly whiny, but very endearing as she begs sweetly

“Heeey, Severa, what’s wrong? You usually have something snarky to say by now!”

Severa responds with another sigh, then follows it up with

“Ugh! I thought you didn’t like hugging me when I’m wearing this cold armour!”

Cynthia hugs tighter, until Severa can legitimately feel her embrace through her plate metal, saying in a significantly sing-song voice

“I changed my miiind…”

“Erk... Well, what if I don’t WANT you to freeze to death?!”

“I don’t mind!”

“Gods, Cynthia! I just… “

“Feeling better yet?”

Cynthia knows for sure that her hug is helping when Severa suddenly relaxes. Yes, there’s no one who knows better how to cheer someone up than Cynthia, even if Severa is TECHNICALLY wearing the cold, overbearing hero armour. She almost giggles, remembering how she used to think Severa was cold herself, but a girl who casually cuts down a tree, sprints for miles, and makes such good stew is definitely a hero, even if she’s in disguise. Severa awkwardly racks her brain for what she could even do next, but relaxes into Cynthia’s embrace despite herself. Cynthia herself accidentally thinks too hard about how cool it is that Severa is, like, a hero in disguise, and lets out a tiny giggle. As soon as Severa tenses back up to her full height, then spins around with aplomb, Cynthia regrets squeezing her against her will for a moment. Severa’s face is terrifying, a stern, tired, emotional glare peering directly into Cynthia’s eyes. The harsh, biting words which follow chill Cynthia immeasurably. She really put her heart and soul into that hug, because Severa, when she’s nice, is truly something special. Her words ring out loudly

“GODS, Cynthia! I- I just can’t DEAL with you!”

Cynthia tries to pull away from Severa with a grimace, but feels a sharp grasp at her shoulders from the hero. Cynthia tries to apologize, saying

“S-sorry…”

Her point is made moot by the single tear running down Severa’s scarlet face, then a sudden, tight, but warm embrace and a pair of lips meeting her own. Severa’s lips are rough and prying, and Cynthia allows them to explore where they will, the soft sensation coming and going from the outside of her lips in a steady, firm pulse. Finally, they were on the same page! Cynthia grapples onto her even tighter, smushing their lips together like a pair of now-gentle pillows. Severa pulls away, tears rolling down her face not for something sad, but because of the intensity of her reciprocated feelings. How could Cynthia still be so peppy, so truly blissful, even after seeing Severa at her most ugly?! She tries to pull away, but Cynthia nestles in the crook of her neck, awkwardly sandwiched between her collar and her shield, and says

“Wow! Severa, I love you too! That was cool!”

Severa stems the flow of tears with sheer willpower, then tries to be stern with her next set of heartbreaking words

“W-why would someone so c-cute like you c-choose someone w-wretched and ugly like me?!”

Cynthia pulls back with shock, and lets Severa lean forward onto her own shoulder. Is this truly why Severa was trying to push her away? Cynthia hasn’t ever KNOWN anyone who looks half as good as Severa, and if she really needs a verbal confirmation of her many assets, then Cynthia can definitely provide. Cynthia grandly states, partially into the air, with her softest and most encouraging tone

“Severa, I’ve never met ANYONE as beautiful as you, and you’re so nice and cool that I really do want to be with you! You’re so clever and fun, so skilled and so neat… It’s just awesome!”

With a stifled sob, then a real sob, Severa tries to respond elegantly, but can’t. She instead replies with a swift, punctual, desperate and shaky

“G-gods, n-never t-t-try to flatter me again. That was so sappy I think the tree behind us is jealous. Gods Cynthia! I love you so much!”

Cynthia giggles harmlessly, leafing through Severa’s locks absently while the girl gets all of her sobbing out. It’s a true joy to hear something so happy, Cynthia thinks, and it’s all in a job well done. Wait, this can’t just be a JOB, now, can it? She swiftly says

“Hey wait, um, Severa, does this mean we’re dating?”

“Yes, dummy.”

“Oh, cool!”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continued directly in "What happens after?!", but that's in the same series, so AO3 should tell you about that.


End file.
